


The Hourglass

by silverstarsandroses



Series: Moonlight [2]
Category: Aladdin (2019)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Forbidden Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 10:02:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20095471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverstarsandroses/pseuds/silverstarsandroses
Summary: "She can’t let this carry on, for both their sakes. Does he even know the law, that she’s bound to marry a prince? Even if he does, he doesn’t know that the urgency for Jasmine to marry has been growing by what feels like the day lately.Her thoughts turn to the remaining list of suitors set to arrive in the coming weeks and months, and she worries her hands in her lap as she imagines her hourglass running out.Then a voice behind her says, 'Miss me?'"





	The Hourglass

“This is the third night in a row,” Dalia says.

Jasmine sighs. Her hand brushes the front of her skirts, smoothing it nervously as she’s been doing for several minutes now. “I know. This can’t…just one more night.”

Dalia comes forward and puts a hand on Jasmine’s shoulder. “For your own sake, I hope so. There’s no way this can end happily. You know that, right?”

Jasmine turns her face away. Yes, she knows. No, she doesn’t want to say it out loud.

Just one more night. She’ll re-establish the boundaries that she foolishly let slip in the first place. She will. But after all, Aladdin does still have her necklace. She can hardly refuse to see him and lose such a precious piece of jewelry.

Dalia leaves, her slippers and the hem of her gown brushing softly against the tiled floor. In the distance, Jasmine can hear the faintest edges of the sounds of the city: music being plucked and drummed in the square, the thumping of guards’ boots on the palace walls, even the distant roar of the ocean. She can’t make out anything more distinct, but from her balcony, she can just barely hear the edges of a world she can’t be part of.

One more night of letting part of that world come to her. Just one more.

She sits on the bench beside the railing and smooths her skirts over her lap. She’s wearing green tonight; she thought of her emerald necklace that Aladdin stole as she dressed this morning. She has the matching emerald hair pins pulling her hair back, and she re-secured them just before she came outside. She hopes that it will deter Aladdin from brushing her hair back from her face, as he’s so fond of doing.

(Warmth floods her at the memory. What wall, one has to wonder, can she build against that?)

She turns to check the time by the moon. She’s early: the moon has just barely cleared the tip of the minaret, and it looks like it’s been pierced by a spindle. Around it, wisps of silver clouds float lazily, with undersides of deep blue that melt into the night. The night is still.

Jasmine waits. She thinks of Aladdin, hoping the memories of last night will steel her will against his charms tonight. She can’t let this carry on, for both their sakes. Does he even know the law, that she’s bound to marry a prince? Even if he does, he doesn’t know that the urgency for Jasmine to marry has been growing by what feels like the day lately.

Her thoughts turn to the remaining list of suitors set to arrive in the coming weeks and months, and she worries her hands in her lap as she imagines her hourglass running out.

Then a voice behind her says, “Miss me?”

Jasmine turns to see Aladdin beaming at her, one cheek propped up on his fist. He’s got a dopey smile on his face that turns Jasmine a little breathless, a little thoughtless. For a half-second, she smiles back, dumbstruck.

Then she clears her throat and rushes to her feet, eager to put some distance between them.

“I missed my necklace,” she says pointedly.

Aladdin vaults over the balcony wall and lands elegantly in a sitting position on the bench Jasmine just vacated. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the necklace in question, and he holds it up to the moonlight like he did last night. While he looks at it, Jasmine’s eyes trace his profile, from the worried crease in his brow to the hard edge of his jaw. She looks at the silhouette of his lips, and there her eyes linger.

There is where she’s caught looking when Aladdin looks back at her. She pointedly looks only at his eyes, but he smiles at her like he knows. Like he doesn’t mind, either, and he’s rather glad he caught her looking.

He stands and comes closer, and Jasmine tries to match him step for step. She needs to maintain distance. She needs to just say it, really, that this thing – whatever it is, in its infancy though it may be – cannot continue.

But then her back hits a column. When it does, Aladdin seems to notice, then, that Jasmine has backed away. He stops approaching. He swallows, and he hesitates a moment even after he opens his mouth to speak, like maybe he shouldn’t.

She can see it in his eyes, when he steels his nerve and does it anyway. It’s jarring, and a little admirable. The palace has always been full of people who cover themselves in artifice; such openness has no place here.

Aladdin has no place here, she tries to remind herself.

“You know our deal,” Aladdin says. “Your necklace for a kiss, and the cheek isn’t allowed this time.”

If she were a weaker woman, she would throw her arms around his neck and kiss him, necklace or no necklace. If she didn’t know that she needs to be stronger than that for the sake of her eventual throne and the good she can do for her people – Aladdin included – she would let him steal whatever he liked of her jewelry so long as he stayed forever.

But she knows better. She has a good head on her shoulders; it’s what people have always said of her. She’s not the type to let her heart go galloping ahead.

And after all, there are many ways to kiss someone other than on the lips.

Jasmine steps forward and takes Aladdin’s hand, the one not holding her necklace. Her eyes stay on their hands, and she brings their hands up to hover between their chests.

(His hand is rough. She wants to memorize it, every line and every callous.)

Jasmine dips her head and presses her lips for the briefest moment to the back of Aladdin’s hand. Then she lets it drop back down to his side, and she holds hers out. She takes a step back, for good measure.

“My necklace,” she says.

“A deal is a deal,” Aladdin says, as he pours the necklace into Jasmine’s waiting palm. “I could put that back on for you, if you – if you want.”

Jasmine blushes, remembering the moment he’d taken it off her last night. She keeps her eyes on the necklace in her hand, and she prods a finger at the different emeralds, just for something to do other than gaze into Aladdin’s eyes and let herself fall just a bit deeper into that pit.

She needs to explain. The way he looks at her…this needs to be the last time. He needs to understand why. 

“So, the bracelet was your mother’s,” Aladdin says, and his tone is far more lighthearted than Jasmine feels right now, “And the hairpin was from a suitor. Who was this from?”

“My father,” Jasmine answers, her voice very far away. If this were last night, she would have told him the story of her sixteenth birthday, when her father gave her this necklace. The court was graced with musicians from far-flung kingdoms, magicians who made treasures and animals appear and disappear at will, dancers whose skirts swirled through the room in every color.

But instead, because tonight has to be the last night, she tells him, “My father is getting impatient for me to marry.”

“Oh,” Aladdin says. “Um, I’m…how do you feel about that?”

She looks up at him, finally. He looks confused, but it turns to disappointment quickly enough when he sees the sadness in her face.

The words are on the tip of her tongue: we can’t see each other again.

But they won’t come.

Which gives Aladdin time to crack a smile and say, “Are those princes really all so terrible? I mean, one of them’s got to be nice enough.”

Jasmine still can’t reply. There’s a knot in her throat now, one that’s not just there because of Aladdin. No, this dread – this powerlessness – this misery that lives in the pit of her stomach…it’s been here for years now, growing worse with every suitor who comes to visit.

She’s imagined it so many times that the whole of her life flashes in her head in less than the time it takes to blink: a suitor who finally wears down her father’s patience, a lavish wedding, a man she can’t stand, sharing his bed, bearing his children, avoiding him despite living in the same palace, being unable to share in the ruling of her own kingdom, and finally dying with no greater legacy than having borne the next ruler of a kingdom that should have been hers by right.

A blink, and her whole life has been wasted.

Aladdin continues. “If you don’t want any of them, what’s the next tier down? Dukes? Generals? Is there a hierarchy for these things? How long before you hit the –”

“It has to be a prince,” Jasmine says. “By law.”

Aladdin’s eyes widen. Oh.

“I’ve met most of the eligible princes I can by now,” Jasmine says. “At the rate we’re going, I’ll have met them all by summer’s end. My father insists that I choose by then.”

Aladdin nods in sympathy. He reaches out as if to comfort her, but halfway to Jasmine’s arm, he hesitates. He lets his hand hover mid-air for a second, and then he lets it drop.

She needs to say it now: we can’t see each other again.

Instead, she reaches up and takes one of her earrings out. She holds it out to Aladdin; he doesn’t reach for it.

“Take it,” she whispers.

“I thought you said…”

“Take it,” she tells him.

He still doesn’t reach for it, and she’s hoping wildly that he does without having to understand the why. Because if she explains it, more frustration and anger than she’s ever been free to express will come pouring out, and she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to stop it. She doesn’t know that handing over an earring would be enough of a rebellion to quell it.

He reaches a hand out, and Jasmine lets out a breath the moment the gold piece of jewelry leaves her fingers.

“The same time, tomorrow night,” Jasmine tells him.

“Wear your hair down,” he replies. “You look beautiful either way, but –”

“I will.”

He looks at her with pure adoration for a second. He says nothing, and he doesn’t reach out to touch her. He just looks at her as if he’ll never get enough of the sight of her, and it leaves her more breathless than any prince’s love poetry or attempts to steal kisses ever have.

He leaves, the same way he did last night, scaling down the side of her balcony. Jasmine folds her arms on the railing and watches him go. When he touches down on the ground, he takes one last second to look up at her. He pulls the earring from his pocket so that she can see, and then he folds his fist around it and holds it to his chest.

“Until tomorrow, Princess,” he says, in a whisper loud enough to carry up to her.

“Tomorrow,” she repeats, with all the weight of a far greater declaration. Because it is.

She watches him sprint across the garden and scale another wall, and then he’s gone. It’s just her, alone on her balcony, wondering where her head has run off to.

There’s no way this can end happily between them. Dalia will tell her again tomorrow night that this can’t continue, and again, Jasmine won’t be able to justify it. Because she can’t, not with any real logic or words. But there’s this pull in her heart before which everything else is just…lesser. There’s a word for it, she knows, but she doesn’t dare speak it yet.

She will, though. She had her chance several times tonight to do what was practical, and she didn’t. She chose the impossible thing, and she’ll keep choosing it for as long as she can.

As she gets into bed, she turns over an hourglass and listens to the faint sound of the grains falling. It’s a soft whooshing sound, until the grains suddenly run out and the sound just. Stops.

Silence.

Jasmine reaches out and flips the hourglass again, and the soft whooshing sound resumes.


End file.
